Too Many Partisans?

[patton]

I guess I don't know enough about the real war to say, but is it realistic for the game (mod v. 1.05) to spawn ~10 partisan corps per turn? I didn't even take Yugo and Greece. But I get 4-5 or so in Russia and 3-4 or so in Iraq (took for the oil) plus a few more in France, Poland, the UK and Persia. I would say in '43-'44 I was averaging at least eight per turn and as I got closer to Omsk, more like 10. After one turn, I got 12!

Is that really realistic? It sure is a PitA.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

GS is intended for PBEM and I think you play agains the AI. One way the AI "cheats" is to spawn many more partisans than in the PBEM game. You don't get so many partisans in PBEM games. Usually you get 1-2 per turn.

[schwerpunkt]

Just wondering what people think about partisans spawning in France pre-Barbarossa? Having played many games and had to kill quite a few, the number and strength of the French partisans early on seems a bit of overkill (the damn things are hard to kill in winter) and quite ahistorical.

[trulster]

GS is intended for PBEM and I think you play agains the AI. One way the AI "cheats" is to spawn many more partisans than in the PBEM game. You don't get so many partisans in PBEM games. Usually you get 1-2 per turn.

Actually I had commonly 7-8 a turn in PBEM, mostly in Russia from 44 onwards. Maybe some probability on number of hexes conquered*year date?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The probability increases by 1 each year and you check for each hex. So if you conquer more hexes then you will have more partisans spawning. The probability is much higher in non clear hexes.

One reason for the high spawn rate of partisans is to simulate the need to garrison the conquered countries (e. g. France). If you look at the German OOB you see how many soldiers they had in conquered countries. The partisan rules in GS simulates that. All partisans are garrisons only and that means you need a few corps units to quickly destroy the partisans. If you only use Axis garrisons then you may struggle.

Partisans are not a problem as long as you make sure you finish them off pretty soon. If they're allowed to multiply then you might be overwhelmed.

[patton]

Against the AI, they are a HUGE problem. 1944 in Russia I am seeing 12-14 per turn!

[gerones]

Just wondering what people think about partisans spawning in France pre-Barbarossa? Having played many games and had to kill quite a few, the number and strength of the French partisans early on seems a bit of overkill (the damn things are hard to kill in winter) and quite ahistorical.

I agree on this. French resistance in 1941-1942 until the german occupation of southern France almost did not exist at all. It was after the axis occupation (Germany+Italy) of the mountainous French Vichy territory when the partisans started to appear everywhere in all France and even much more on the previous months of Normandy landings. The same could be said for Yugoslavia where it was 1943 the year from which Tito´s partisan movement began to have an importance.

The fact is that I´m afraid it will be difficult to implement a major partisans spawning probability depending on a concrete year since the current spawning probability much depends on terrain.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The fact is that the Germans placed many units in countries like France, Yugoslavia and Greece before 1942 to make sure there were no problems there. If you don't have a rule encouraging garrisoning conquered countries then Germany will send almost all units to the east front in 1941 to sweep the Russians. With the current partisan rules we see that skilled Axis players actually garrison all their conquered countries. That is a good and historical thing. The changed partisan rule was introduced to remove the house rules about having to garrison conquered capitals.

We don't want to force the players to place their units in certain areas, but we can make rules to encourage them to follow the historical path.

I think the people who complain the most about the partisan rules are the ones who ignore garrisoning conquered countries and instead send all their best units to the front line. To them I want to say .... tough luck, but you deserve what's happening. If you place a corps unit in France, Yugoslavia, Greece and Poland and garrisons in port cities then you can quickly deal with the spawning partisans and they won't be a problem for you. If you decide to ignore them then you can lose control if you e. g. get 6 new partisans in a turn.

Do you really think it's more historical for the Axis player to NOT garrison any of their conquered countries?

[patton]

The problem is the AMOUNT not the existence of partisans.

In my last game I kept three INF in the UK, two INF and one ARM in France, lots of INF behind the lines in Russia, and (IIRC) five INF, one MECH and one ARM (plus one FTR and one TAC) in Iraq. France and the UK were manageable. Russia and Iraq were nightmares. It literally got to the point were 10 at least would spawn in Russia and 4-5 in Iraq. There was no way to deal with it. Especially as they pop up in such far flung areas that simply getting to them is a major hassle. By the time you do, many of them will have found their way to a city, be supplied at three and fully reinforced.

I simply could not garrison even every hex with PP value, much less every city (for supply reasons). The manpower cost would have been way too high. I spent lots of time and effort roaming the countryside killing partisans. Very tiresome.

I believe that there should be partisans and I think their presense makes for a better game. But against the AI, the NUMBER of partisan units is way overdone. Not by 50%, either, more like by a factor of 80%.

Perhaps another way to tweak the game would be to make it so that the presense of garrisons would reduce, but not eliminate, spawning. This would simulate the effect of occupation, the risks of covert organization, chance of detection, etc. The fact is, occupying troops were not there simply to crush uprisings when they happened but also to prevent uprisings in the first place by suppressing partisan organizing activity.

This would address your chief concern that players not be able to leave their rear areas totally unguarded. And it would still allow for partisans to pop up and make it necessary to leave behind not just GAR but quality units such as INF, MECH and even ARM as well so that the player could quickly defeat them.

[Plaid]

Why do you want to do something with partisans? When I played GS with AI, it didn't even move them unless there is unguarded city in their visibility. Just garrison all cyties and resourses with something useless like axis minor units, partisans will never attack it, and even if they will (human opponent for example), they are very unlikely to kill even single step, since they are just low efficiency 0 supply garrison, often at not full strength.
Only good use of partisan - wait before it will have 0 efficiency and train your good units on them. Its all about easy "elite" troops.

[patton]

Because I can't garrison all the cities without depleting my manpower to the point that it starts affecting the quality of new units and even drags down the quality of reinforced units.

[richardsd]

thats part of the challenge of the game and very historical it is too

[patton]

It's historical to spawn 10-15 partisan corps per turn? That is, every twenty days?

[richardsd]

that only happens with the AI (its one of its cheats) when you have a lot of territory

manpower was a real issue, so the mechanism is correct - the answer is play a human

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I repeat that GS was NOT made to be used against the AI. It was made for PBEM play. So we haven't bothered with the balance of GS vs the AI. It's not possible to get both the PBEM and AI games balanced because the AI is cheating. We preferred to make it balanced against human opposition.

If you complain about many partisans in Russia and Iraq it means you've captured a lot of Russia and have even managed to get to Iraq. That means you're about to win the game.

[trulster]

For Iraq, just conquer it (Baghdad AND Basra) and no more partisans. Russia though will spawn like crazy, but i see that as pretty historical, for such a huge country a lot of garrison forces are needed.

[Plaid]

Because I can't garrison all the cities without depleting my manpower to the point that it starts affecting the quality of new units and even drags down the quality of reinforced units.

Well, you don't have to garrison very single city in Russia against AI. You need to garrison big ones (for PP) and front line ones (for railing). Even if you allow AI partisans to capture minor city, they will do nothing but standing there.
Also, when you play vs human, you need at least two-lined front across all the Russia, and it takes far more and better units, that garrisoning.

[BuddyGrant]

Perhaps there should be new mod group to mod to mod 'Grand Strategy' for solo play. Since 99% of CEAW users play the game solo that would be a very popular addition:).

[patton]

Perhaps there should be new mod group to mod to mod 'Grand Strategy' for solo play. Since 99% of CEAW users play the game solo that would be a very popular addition:).

I am all for it but I have no idea how to code AI, so I would be useless!

[gchristie]

Perhaps there should be new mod group to mod to mod 'Grand Strategy' for solo play. Since 99% of CEAW users play the game solo that would be a very popular addition:).

99%...really? Lot of unsatisfied customers out there I bet.